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Moon Rocks - List of Investigators, July 1969

The next time someone tells us that the moon rocks were faked and the scientists who investigated them were hoodwinked by Nasa, perhaps he/she could be referred to the following list of well over 100 investigators and asked to tell us exactly which of them were incompetent.

The hoax-believer could get a copy of the December 1969 National Geographic and read a preliminary article about the Apollo 11 rocks on pages 788-791. Worthy of note there is a comment from Dr S. Ross Taylor of the Australian National University (who is unlikely to be a Nasa conspirator): "The moon rocks are different enough from earth rocks to keep us busy for years."

The September 1973 National Geographic issue has, on page 322, a photograph of one of the investigators listed below, Dr David S. McKay, his assistant Dr Uel S. Clanton, and electron microscope photos taken by them.

The list is from the Apollo 11 Press Kit, pages 220-241, and only includes those investigators who had put their names forward as at July 1969. There were more.

I spent a long time last year, doing a typescript of the Apollo 11 Press Kit. It was worth the effort due to the original being full of such useful information. The pdf is about 9Mb and the typescript is much smaller at 404 kb in a rich text file. It has better formatting than above (subscripts etc.), and I've corrected a few obvious errors in the original.

Anyone is welcome to a copy which I'll email if they send me a personal message with their email address.

Does anyone know of a website that would host it so that anyone can download it? I'll check with Eric Jones to see if he'd like it for the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.

Yep. Many conspiracists believe the Apollo samples were (and still are) kept under lock and key, never to be delivered to anyone outside the U.S. and then only to geologists and other scientists who had been specially approved by the U.S. government not to spill the beans. When it is known that as early as 1969 NASA was delivering Apollo samples to scientists all over the world, it becomes less likely that they are fakes that simply haven't been discovered yet because of who is allowed to see them.

Many conspiracists believe the Apollo samples were (and still are) kept under lock and key, never to be delivered to anyone outside the U.S. and then only to geologists and other scientists who had been specially approved by the U.S. government not to spill the beans.

Ah yes, I remember that huge CIA/FBI/MI5 security vetting form I had to fill in before I was allowed to touch the lunar samples we had at the University of Kent last summer to show to a bunch of teenage students....

That said, there is a lot of security involved in getting hold of those samples (they are to be kept under lock and key, rooms where they are to be displayed must be closed and guarded during the display, and we were not allowed to inform the media we had them until after the event), but that has more to do with the fact that they are priceless and irreplacable than anything else.

When it is known that as early as 1969 NASA was delivering Apollo samples to scientists all over the world, it becomes less likely that they are fakes that simply haven't been discovered yet because of who is allowed to see them.

Yep. Many conspiracists believe the Apollo samples were (and still are) kept under lock and key, never to be delivered to anyone outside the U.S. and then only to geologists and other scientists who had been specially approved by the U.S. government not to spill the beans. When it is known that as early as 1969 NASA was delivering Apollo samples to scientists all over the world, it becomes less likely that they are fakes that simply haven't been discovered yet because of who is allowed to see them.

Your list is a list of the 11 countries that received rocks for scientific research.

Below is a list of the countries that got a piece of the "Goodwill" rock. These pieces are inside a plexiglass form, and hence aren't directly accessible for research. I saw a moon rock in the NEtherlands, and IIRC that was inside a prism instead of the cylinder like the goodwill plate of Honudras shows. ANy info on that?

Here's the "goodwill" rock samples list as presented by NASA:
Note that the USSR is listed

That said, there is a lot of security involved in getting hold of those samples

I guess this holds true for the samples that can be manipulated and not so much for the "publicity" (my term) samples. When I was in high school (oh so many years ago) My chemistry/physics teacher had obtained a plexiglass or glass plate in which were embedded several samples of lunar material. We couldn't do anything more than examine the samples under a microscope, but even that was enough to compare to similar Earth formed samples and demonstrate that the lunar samples formed in the absence of water.
There was no guards needed and all Fr. Stout had to do to get it was write to NASA for them on loan as part of a program to make limited lunar sample material temporarily available to schools.

One day back in the 70s, I think was, I held a piece of moon rock in one hand and an aluminium rod from Surveyor 3 in the other hand.

They had been given to the director of Wellington's observatory. He used to pop into my camera store for a chat now and then, and came in one day clutching this ordinary-looking piece of aluminium to his chest as if it was reather precious, so I asked him what it was. On being told, I had to ask, "Can I hold it, please?" and he answered, "Yes, and I've got a piece of moon rock here too if you'd like to hold that!"

The piece of rock was about the size of two or three pinheads and encased in a zip-lock plastic bag, but hey, who's complaining?

Apart from the Lunar samples that were sent to Australia for research (and so far as I know are still here at the Australian National University), there are several other 'display' pieces of moon rock in Australia.

In addition to our piece of the "Goodwill Rock", Australia also received a small sample of Moon rock form Apollo 11, encased in lucite and mounted on a plaque in a similar manner to the "Goodwill" piece. The Apollo 11 sample was for many years publicly displayed in Parliament House (home of our Federal Government) in Canberra and is now on display at the NASA DSN tracking station at Tidbinbilla, near Canberra. The station's Visitors' Centre also has another, larger Lunar sample (about the size of a goose egg) on display: a loan from NASA that was carried to Australia by astronaut John Young Moon as an Apollo 25th Anniversary gift.

The "Goodwill" sample was displayed at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney from 1988-2000, before being toured with the "To Mars and Beyond" exhibition. It is now on display at the "National Museum of Australia" in Canberra. The Powerhouse Museum currently has on display a much larger, egg-size, Lunar sample, also on loan from NASA. In addition, there is one Australian teacher who has been granted NASA permission to hold a set of those educational display samples mentioned by Waarthog, for use in educational programs around the country.

So there are four lunar samples on public display in Australia-and while these samples are lucite encased, they could easily be examined by geologists if the necessity arose. Hardly "secretive and locked away"!

Oh yes, and althoguh we got Moon rocks, Australia didn't receive any wheat from the US. Actually, we sold our wheat to the Soviet union, too.....so maybe we were in on the conspiracy after all!

I know this is an old thread and I have no idea if any of you folks even post here, but I was searching for information on the "Principal Investigators" of the lunar samples because...well...my father was one of them.

His name is Roman A Schmitt (they spelled his name wrong on this list, a common mistake). I can tell you he was one of the most competent and honest men and his research played a key role in determining the age of the moon. Jack Schmitt (no relation) came to Oregon State University where my father taught and presented his Apollo 17 finding at the time. He even came to our house for dinner!

Five groups of basalts (A, B1, B2, B3, D) with three principal ages exist at the Apollo 11 site. These range from the low-K, low rare-earth element (REE) Groups B1, B2, and B3 to the low-K, high REE Group D basalts, to the high-K, high-REE Group A basalts. The Group A basalts are the only high-K (>0.2 wt% K2O) basalts, and youngest, with an age of 3.59 ± .02 Ga; Groups B3 and B1 are 3.71 ± .02 and 3.67 ± .02 Ga, respectively; Group B2 basalts are the oldest, at 3.85 ± .02 Ga. Group D basalts have not been dated. Fractionation modelling for major and trace elements indicates that the B1 basalts could have formed from a B3-like parent liquid. The B2 and D basalts can also be related to liquids similar to the B3-B1 composition through the presence of varying amounts of modal whitlockite. Thus, the entirety of low-K high-Ti basalts at Apollo 11 may have formed through melting of the same source region. The Group A basalt compositions are consistent with formation from a different parent liquid, with the composition of Apollo 11 orange glass. Modelling of major- and trace-elements in the Apollo 11 orange glass, indicate that the composition of the Group A basalts is consistent with fractionation of this glass, coupled with some assimilation (~7.5–15%) of an evolved KREEP-like material. However, this component is much younger than primitive KREEP (4.4 Ga). This “neuKREEP” component, similar to the composition of quartz monzodiorites described from the Apollo 15 site, probably represents evolved material formed during plutonism prior to the formation of the Apollo 11 orange glass liquid.

I second bknight's positive comments: a fascinating list. To suggest that the conspirators managed to fool the likes of Tommy Gold, or Harold Urey, Ringwood, H.H. Hess,Arthur Eddington, for crying out loud, and host of others representing the cream of Earth scientists, is plain crazy. Then I guess "crazy" is a diagnostic feature of conspirators.

I think I may have read that paper for Volcanology class when I was getting my bachelor of science in Geology.

My godfather growing up was Gordon Goles (a volcanologist, and also on the list above). My father and he worked together for many years, cooperating between OSU and UO. I was really only a lad at the time but still recall being in awe in the presence of such smart men.

I have a few treasures handed down from my dad, not the least of which are a couple small samples of a lunar and also mars meteorite. Geology was one of my favorite sciences.